Writing Assignment help on : Earthquake

What is an Earthquake?

An earthquake is referred to as the result of a sudden release inside the Earth’s crust which creates seismic waves. Also referred to as seismism or seismic activity, these seismic waves of an area is referred to as the size of earthquake experienced for a period of time. These seismic events could erupt naturally or caused by the humans and generating seismic waves. In simple terms earthquake can be defined as occurrence of unusual activities caused due to disturbances created inside the earth’s crust and hence causing destruction in the entire area connected (Geology n.d.,).

Aim of the workshop

Just like any other workshop this aims at several aspects to educate the students about the earthquake, its causes, its impacts, and precautions to take while it occurs. The three primary aim of this workshop would be:

Describing the bigger picture of the earthquake in space and time moving beyond the personal survival and that of the community.
Hands on activity which serves as a model which would explain what happens when the stresses is accumulated at a fault are released in the earthquake.
Contrasting the small scope of historic time with the vastness of geologic time. Through Paleoseismology, students would come to be aware of the techniques seismologists use to read the record for the relatively recent earthquakes.

Key Messages

All the students involved of the workshop would operate a model for observing the type of motion which occurs at a fault while an earthquake occurs. Further they would also explore the effects of the several variables.

The primary questions addressed through the workshop are:

The impact of the tectonic movements on a structure above the earth?
The scientific requirements for making a structure resistant to the impacts of an earthquake?

The entire workshop is intended for helping the students for observing the stick slip movement during an earthquake and the way it works.

Workshop Learning

The workshop aims at providing different learning to the students each activity relates to the lesson regarding an earthquake and its related activities. The learning each student would get after the workshop is over is listed below:

The 1^st aim of the workshop would be to help the students move beyond their basic knowledge of an earthquake and understand the bigger picture of an earthquake. Seismic Sleuths curriculum has the purpose of supplementing the school’s syllabus while depicting a big picture without filling the basic earth science background. Initially before the workshop begins the assessment of the student’s readiness is required. In case the initial review reveals that they have no familiarity with rocks and minerals or with faulting along with the other processes forming landscapes. This would need a brief introduction from the initial chapters of middle school geology, describing the elements and terms with examples, relating them with the earth science text books used in class.
The second thing to be learnt out of this would be learning about the basic terms used for an earthquake such as fault, epicentre, magnitude, etc. The teacher needs to relate every part of the activity to the terms relevant to an earthquake. This would help the student to correlate and understand the elements of an earthquake much better.
Another thing which can be understood by performing the activity below would be the layers below the earth’s surface and the movement of the plates beneath. With the activity to understand the things which needs to be taken care of while constructing a building and applying their minds student would come to know about the things which could be harmful for the structure while an earthquake occurs.
While recording their observations students would also come to know that the entire damage caused due to an earthquake is directly proportional to the duration of the earthquake, population density, methods of construction and the geophysical/geological characteristics of a particular area. This covers studying the 3 of the most destructive earthquake effects i.e. liquefaction, tsunami and landslides. These three are the effects of seismic activities during an earthquake.
Finally the students would be required to underline the importance of the site while interpreting maps and highlighting different features of the landscapes.

It has to be kept simple and the stress should be laid on application of minds by the students which would facilitate in the learning process in a great deal. Moreover the teacher should take care of assisting the students if they are stuck so that they could locate out where they are going wrong or if things could have been done in a better manner.

Target Audience

The workshop has been designed to educate the students belonging to the age groups between 12 to 14 years. This would be a well-designed workshop to assist them in learning and relating to the studies provided in the text book as well as discussed in the classroom.

Objectives

The entire activity has to be performed to give an overview of how engineers build buildings to make it prone to earthquake. Moreover the activity would allow the students to understand the impacts of an earthquake on a structure and come out with solutions to prepare the structure which is resistant to the impacts. The objectives of the study is to allow the students to

Model frictional forces that are involved during the movement of a fault
Measuring the movement, calculating averages and plotting the information on a graph
Exploring the variables for the fault strength vs. energy stored
Identify the factors which make buildings earthquake proof, including cross bracing, tampered geometry, and large ‘’footprints’’
Model the earthquake proof structure by the use of simple materials
Compare the model structure with the structure it represents
Understand the importance of engineers to learn more about earthquake

Equipment Required

The materials required for the entire activity are as follows:

30-35 toothpicks
30-35 miniature mallows
8.5 inch square disposal baking dishes or 8.5 inch by 11 inch disposal baking pan
8-10 boxes of Jell-O (additionally a stove, water, and a pan for making Jell-O before time)

Time Aspect

The workshop needs to be exhaustive and the entire activities would take about one hour for individual students.

How will the instructions be presented to the students?

A common as well as very simple definition needs to be provided to the entire class in order to supplement the existing knowledge of the current students. This should be comprehensive in nature and aim at covering up the essential elements for the study. The next step by the instructor/teacher would be to explain the students that while an earthquake occurs on a fault plane the movement do not proceed smoothly away from the focus. The change in the amount of friction with the fault causes irregular fault movements. It will include the change as well as the length of the faults, depth, rock types, the strength along the fault and the natural barriers of the movement.

After the above entire base is developed the with the basics made clear a model needs to be constructed before time and carry out a rehearsal of the entire activity to be performed. Finally the instructor needs to ensure that everything is in the right place which is convenient for the participants to reach (Earthquake n.d).

Activity

Preparing for the activity

The Jell-O should be prepared a night before the activity so that it is fully set before the students begin with the activity. This needs to be prepared beforehand by the instructors and made available to the students. It can be poured in a eight 8.5 inch pans which could be shared by 4 students. It might be a large pan as well which could be shared by the entire class.

The second thing to prepare would be making one marshmallow-toothpick structure as a model on display for the students to understand what’s required.

Activity to be performed by the students

First of all the student journals need to be passed out to the students. Then they have to be instructed to fill in the top left section of their journal with some vocabulary terms. The students would need to record their observations while performing their activities in the journals.
Instruction needs to be passed out to the students to make models of buildings and conduct an experiment for testing how well their structures would stand up during an earthquake. They also need to be told that these are the things which a civil engineer covers while developing a building.
Instruct the students to check out the already built display model to understand what is required to be done.
A demonstration for making the cubes and triangles by using the toothpicks and marshmallows would also be required. Things like demonstrating the method of breaking the toothpick into equal halves and stacking up the cubes and triangles to make towers can be helpful as well.
Now distribute 30-35 toothpicks and 30-35 marshmallows to every single student. An importance should be laid while giving out these to explain the students about limited resources available to the engineers while building structures.
A student should make the structure of toothpicks as well as marshmallows by the use of the materials provided. Students are free to make large as well as small cubes or the triangles while using a broken or a whole toothpick.
A few rules might be provided to the students to give them an idea of how they should proceed further. They could be suggested to construct structures which has at least two toothpick levels high, structures which contain at least a single triangle, or structures with at least a square or triangle.
Now the students need to place the structures built on the Jell-O.
In case aluminium pans were in use they need to be tapped from the bottom for stimulating compression or primary waves. Moreover usage of the glass baking dishes would require them to be shaken back and forth in the shearing motion for stimulating S as well as secondary waves.
After the structures have been tested by the students, instruct them to redesign and rebuild the structures and test again. Given them a span of 15-20 minutes to evaluate what they could have done to make the structure stronger. This will help them come up with ideas for any topple that may have happened, should the base be bigger, a taller or shorter structure could have been better, within a span of an hour for the activity students may redesign the structure to get the best design possible.
Now after the entire activity has been performed the students need to draw and label the shapes and their designs in terms of cubes, triangles, etc.
Now instruct the students to finish of their journals as per the assessment section mentioned below.

Journal

The Journal needs to be filled up by the students which should contain the following sections:

Title of the page with definition of Earthquake as per their understanding
Vocabulary which would be divided into 3 parts where each would have the following questions:
- What I have learned?
- What I observed
- Questions I have

All the students need to fill in the above sections individually as per their understanding and the things they have learnt out of the above activity. This would give them a clear idea of how the science of engineering needs to work to prepare structures which are much resistant to the earthquake. Besides the activity is full of different actions where each represent a phase of an earthquake. For example the shaking of the aluminium plates to observe the vibrations generated and its impact represents the tectonic movements and its impact on the earth’s surface. Before the activity is started a session on earthquake by the experts or dedicated teachers of the field would be highly useful for the students to understand and relate to the terms and actions they use and perform respectively. It is a simple yet effective activity which by use of simple tools explains the concepts and actions during an earthquake.

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